A veritable mountain of evidence indicates that when it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals. This institutional reality has absolutely nothing to do with politics or ideology — it takes place no matter who’s in office or which party’s in power.
Some people call it “regulatory capture.” Others call it “control fraud” (William Black, primarily, along with me.) But I take it further; this is Control Fraud within the government, which is the most-pernicious form of all.
Control fraud is the delberate looting of a corporation or country by a few at the top. This is done primarily by rigging accounting rules, regulations, and laws (as well as by corruption, of course ) so that the few have no accountability and essentially are immune from the law. Don Corleone could only wish he had it so good. The crucial point here is, as William Black says, the failure of the entity is not a failure of the fraud. The plundering elite at the top does not care if their actions destroy the corporation (or country) because they’ve already stolen everything they could.
It is argued and history may indeed prove George AWOL Bush “The Worst President Ever” but make no mistake, mark no error, The Cheney Administration accomplished everything it set out to.